Nigeria in Focus

...Each jounce from a rut or pothole sent beds, bicycles, pots and passengers flying from their moorings and clunking back again, while children scrambled to secure the flapping ends of tarpaulin...

...A*, soon as the message became clear, people everywhere changed their views, often overnight, to fall in line behind the "big men" of their region...

...The crash position of the plane, reported to have originated in Switzerland and to have stopped over in Fort Lamy...

...obviously hope Nigeria stays in one piece, suspect whites of supporting Gowon...

...The most hopeful theory is that the regions can go into a loose union for trade while each develops at its own speed, so that over the next 10 years the North can catch up to the rest of the country...

...The ban on the export of foodstuffs to other regions will also help, although it definitely is inconveniencing the Midwest, whose retailers usually bought wholesale at Onitsha...

...The country's official ruling body, the present Council was formed after the bloody overthrow last July of General Johnson Aguivi Ironsi's regime...

...When that happens, the theory goes, everyone will sec once more the benefits of national unity and Nigeria will be restored as a strong country...

...Most significant was the violence in the town of Kainji, scene of Nigeria's biggest development project, the $224 million Kainji Dam and hydro-electric plant on the Niger River...

...The problem is not merely xenophobia, however...

...For their part...

...Indeed, some middle belt farmers still dress in leaves...

...Within 24 hours the lorries began their eastwardly parade...

...We would rather be joined with the Yorubas and Hausas because they will leave us alone...

...Although Ojukwu said the repatriation would be temporary, many of the Yorubas and Midwesterners went home embittered...

...Nigerians hastened to leap onto the bandwagon...

...The council meeting was the latest in a scries devoted to the principle issues dividing the country...

...Lieutenant Colonel Chukwemeka Odunmegwu-Ojukwu...

...Then, in July's inter-tribal fighting, the Army fell apart, Ironsi was killed and a new Northern-based government acceded in Lagos...

...Since the Northerners were unable to adjust to the new conditions themselves, the British agreed to help, and the Ibos and other tribes, sensing opportunities for profit and advancement, were eager to do the rest...

...The dam being a symbol of unwanted Northern modernization, the mob's attack on it can be seen as symbolic too...

...With separatist attitudes hardening in every region, it is increasingly difficult to be optimistic about the future unity and peace of Nigeria...

...Many Hausas and Lebanese say Israel is supplying him with arms because the United Arab Republic is allegedly arming the North...

...The passions surrounding this remarkable tribe were dramatized in the fall, when hundreds of thousands of Ibos from all over Nigeria joined in one of the most overwhelming migrations in African history...

...The Hausas figure the British can be gotten rid of at will...

...Ojukwu, however, did ask all non-Easterners in his region, including students, to return home...

...To this day, most Northerners refuse to send their children to schools, even where they are available...

...In the North, where the current resurgence of tribalism had its violent beginnings, long-held traditions continue to play an important role...

...In Benin, a false rumor that Hausas were on the edge of the city sent hundreds of Ibo girls at one secondary school fleeing into the bush, and other rumors of fighting in town caused many persons to leave their jobs in mid-morning to try to gather their families...

...Thus the conference adjourned on November 1. pessimistic about getting the Eastern delegates back to Lagos...

...The North is still an area where parents intentionally maim children, usually by twisting their legs, so they will be able to beg for a living (one of the causes of prejudice against the Hausas in the other regions is that many who go south are mendicant cripples...

...In early October, the other regions feared that the rioters might not stop at the Northern border...

...Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Usman Katsina, reacted to the Ibo exodus by calling on Northern citizens to volunteer for work in various ministries and expressed joy that several hundred turned out...

...New market stalls have been opened for refugee traders and the government is seeking to stimulate other means of refugee employment...

...Where before they sought to protect the lucrative political compromise in Laaos, thoush, now they appealed to tribal solidarity in the face of danger...

...Their muttering was all the suggestion the Ibos needed...

...Chad, was such that it could have been headed for either the North or the East...

...The rioters, including uniformed soldiers, began their rapine in the more northerly cities of Katsina, Kano and Kaduna...

...Colonel Gowon sent emissaries to Colonel Ojukwu in the hope of persuading the East to return...

...Everywhere Awolowo went his very presence stirred thousands of sycophants to cheer tribal solidarity and buy a booklet called "The Exodus and the Return of Chief Obafemi Awolowo," proclaiming him "Leader of the Yorubas...

...The rickety wooden red, blue, or black lorries, with their roaring Mercedes-Benz engine, bore most of the usual West African slogans: "No Telephone to God," "No Event, No History," and "No Money, No Friend...

...Only one of Nigeria's four regions bustled normally through the height of the turmoil...

...In the North the clubs arc lily white, and the members insist the only reason is the Hausas' refusal to join...

...General Ironsi, and his regional military governors made it clear that unequivocal unity was in and tribalism was out...

...That was the East...

...The mushrooming rubber industry in the Midwest is in trouble because most of the tappers were Ibos and many Binis, deriding the Ibos for their "willingness to do anything for money," consider the menial job of distributing and collecting cups from rubber trees beneath their dignity...

...While some anti-Ibo incidents occurred in the West, they were not so overt, widespread, or publicly condoned as in the North...

...From the outset, the words of the Supreme Commander...

...When the mobs were rumored to be approaching, the Italians left for the Western region, courageously evacuating most of the Ibos, though some Ibos were reported killed at the dam site, and much of the work was halted...

...while the Bini majority had to settle for lesser offices...

...The group met in Accra, Ghana, because there was no city in Nigeria where the safety of all live leaders could be assured...

...But many Northerners say they simply do not care...

...Enahoro's return to the Midwest had a similar effect, as Bini tribesmen rallied to the newly released "big man" and revived their tribal hostility to the Ibos...

...And instead of being the impoverished class, they comprised the wealthiest, most industrious, best educated tribe...

...So politicians, coming out of jails and various other places of hiding, raced for the arena...

...It did not substantially brighten the outlook for Nigeria...

...despite the fact that it accomplished virtually nothing...

...When you travel through the North talking to people, university graduates and petty traders alike, you meet an overwhelming consensus that it would be better for the region to sag to the dismally inferior economic status of neighboring Niger than to accept what Northerners see as an Ibo occupation...

...Then Gowon appointed them to head their respective region's delegations to the constitutional conference...

...The West...

...Now they would show what they could do at home...

...and a chain of small pagan tribes that are by far the most primitive peoples in Nigeria and have never posed a threat to Hausa domination...

...There he sits on the ground with 30 or more companions and an elderly teacher in a white robe, holds a brown wooden Koranic tablet in his lap, and memorizes it in Arabic...

...The first was held in September when an all-Nigeria constitutional conference convened here...

...A sag of this kind, moreover, could occur if the North continues to separate itself from the rest of the country...

...some said Ibos had given of their talents and their money for the national interest and had received nothing for it but the slaughter of their kinsmen by the North and a lack of sympathy from the West and Midwest...

...The only class a Hausa child is likely to attend is one that meets for several hours in the morning?either under a tree or right in the street...

...Down every strip of tar, over every laterite bush road the lorries rumbled...

...The East supplied most of the officers for the Army (though many of them have been killed), but the North supplied more soldiers and bases, so most of the artillery and ammunition is there...

...When overcrowding caused by the refugee influx led to the closing of the region's schools a month before the normal December vacation, there were no loud objections, and the schools are due to re-open on schedule this month...

...returned directly to his Eastern capital of Engu...

...According to this plan, national elections would be abolished and the central authority would be rotated among the regions...

...And once it achieved independence...

...Four of them returned afterward to Lagos, the nominal Federal capital, where they released a communique divulging the meeting's main achievement: agreement on holding another ses-Jonathan Kwitny, who just completed an extended stay in Nigeria, is now touring East Africa...

...Speculators can have tiieir pick of rumors that the East will invade the North next spring 10 take the farmland south of the Benue River, then blow up the only bridge across the river...

...The assumption that the "big men," as they are called, will act in the interest of the clan is not challenged...

...Ojukwu has told reporters that if the East left the federation it would be because it had "been forced out...

...The exodus from the West and Midwest had more complex causes...

...Now plantation owners and rubber marketers are worrying about who will bring in the product...

...An Ibo college graduate, driving back from Kaduna in a hired truck with Northern license plates, reports that Hausa soldiers in uniform invaded the home of a brother, gunned him down, killed his wife and their three children, and then burned the house...

...Ibos were responsible for a high percentage of the trading in non-local goods that today are difficult to find...

...Politically, Ojukwu is the one high office-holder in the country who still exercises effective and unchallenged leadership over his jurisdiction...

...Each party insists????as do all the tribes????that they want only to be let alone...

...Awolowo and Enahoro each represented a majority group in his region that was denied control of the local government by the civilian regime...

...Mid-westerners boasted that peaceful Benin City had become "the Geneva of Nigeria" in the current crisis, and no violence was reported there...

...The pact against the Ibos seemed sealed...

...The Kano eye hospital now turns away all but outpatients because most of its staff has gone back East...

...They went immediately to confer with Gowon, and the clear implication was that their tribes would assume local power...

...None of the new plans provided for a center strong enough to control the Armed Forces or police, and the basic issues remained unresolved...

...Then, waving weapons wildly and shouting slogans against the "infidels" (non-Moslems), they spread their violence gradually through the Jos plateau to cities like Makurdi, until it looked to some as if it were a new Moslem jihad...

...No reasonable man could have hoped to stop the exodus from the North after the events there of this summer...

...Since some of those politicians were present, the charges were not made specific...

...While the politicians often used secession as a threat, they realized they were far too dependent on the fruits of unity to jettison the federation...

...This migration, returning to an embattled parochialism the more enterprising individuals who had diffused through the country, was accompanied by a radical change in the attitudes of political leaders...

...The gasoline supply is uncertain from day to day...

...Whole rows of small trading stores have closed down and many stalls in town markets are empty...

...Midwest and North each presented plans for a federal system resembling the First Republic, overthrown by Ironsi in Januarv 1966 because of inefficiency, corruption and resistance to Ibos attempting to establish a National party...

...the Ibos...

...And if a trader or a taxi driver fails to do business, he shrugs and says Allah just did not want him to have any customers that day...

...Outside the North, the so-called "European Club" in most cities????where the well-to-do swim, play tennis, have dances, dinners and private film shows-boasts a substantial or even majority Nigerian membership...

...And "follow the leader" long has been a traditional Nigerian political principle...

...Even the other delegations' offers to move the meeting to a Nigerian warship in Lagos harbor, or an off-shore oil rig, proved unavailing...

...As the actions of the mob suggested, the Northern people never accepted the full commitment to modernization...

...Finally, the Military Council decided to assemble in neighboring Ghana, ruled by congenial military officers and safe from Nigerian tribal enmities...

...Others wondered iust what kind of volunteers could be found to replace British-trained Ibo engineers and doctors, or to run generators without fuel...

...The feeling of national unity, never stronger than it was last year immediately after the overthrow of the First Republic, has degenerated during recent months into fierce, separatist, tribal loyalties????with every other tribe having some grudge against, and fear of, the Ibos...

...We do not want that...

...As a member of the powerful Ibo tribe that controls the Eastern Region and had dominated the Federal government until Ironsi's overthrow, he did not dare visit Lagos, which is still occupied by troops from the Hausa tribe responsible for the massacre of Ibos in the North last summer and fall...

...even if this costs three times as much...

...The people look to him with confidence as he makes each succeeding move in the chess game with the national government...

...But one of the most popular lorry slogans of six months ago was far less in evidence: "One Nigeria...

...The other great fear is that the land in the East will not be able to support the expanded population...

...Flying over the region, one can see that most of the land is still un-planted...

...When banks, hospitals, schools, electric power stations, railroads and import good stores became Nigerianized in the North, in accordance with the newly independent government's wishes, expatriates and Ibos were called in to run them...

...Then came the coup of January 15 and the supposedly permanent ouster of the former politicians...

...The two major domestic problems predicted for the East so far have failed to materialize, but still could...

...The extreme conservatism of the aristocratic Hausa society has provided continuous open opposition to the modern political, economic and educational institutions that have been generally accepted in the southern part of the country (where the Western, Midwestern and Eastern regions are located...

...Evidence showed that the Action Group????a political party in which Awolowo was the leader and Enahoro his assistant?was importing machine guns from Ghana packed in orange crates...

...In general, the East is proud of its continuing boom and is confident it can keep the boom going with or without the rest of the country...

...The Ibo exodus has greatly reduced commerce throughout the West and Midwest...

...The release of two political prisoners within a week after the Gowon government assumed office, for example, radically altered the situation in the West and Midwest...

...As one Bini secondary school teacher put it, "When a Yoruba trader comes to Benin, he rents his store and he sells his goods and after so many years he takes his money and goes home...

...While soldiers at the edge of the city by the Niger River bridge carefully checked all incoming persons for weapons and outgoing persons for food, Onitsha, the largest market in West Africa, was its usual madhouse of commerce, with prices only slightly raised...

...The Hausas insist they want to be left alone...

...The Northern military governor...

...Doctors, engineers and merchants across the country joined $15-a-month rubber tappers????loading their families and all the belongings they could fit into lorries, trucks or vans on just a week-end's notice, and racing for the nine-month-old bridge that spans the Niger River at Onitsha, gateway to the Eastern Region...

...This economic and educational disparity did not much bother the North until the independence movement began to unite it with the other regions about two decades ago...

...and it is hard to see how the removal of Ibos from Northern life can help...

...The cows are coming from the Yorubas, who buy from the Hausas and re-sell to the East...

...An Ibo man tells how his train full of refugees was held at Makurdi for ransom for Eastern oil and gasoline while Northern mobs danced around it, killing at will and brandishing the head of an Ibo woman on a stick...

...But nothing slowed the Ibo dash to the east...

...The crash last October in neighboring Cameroun of a plane loaded with weapons bound for Nigeria showed that a military confrontation is possible...

...A charity drive to aid refugees, in the form of donations given as the price of a book of Ojukwu's speeches, is booming...

...The region is composed mainly of two groups of people: the Hausas, including the now inbred Fulani wanderers who conquered the Hausas and spread Islam among them in the jihad of 1804-1810...

...BACKGROUND TO TRIBALISM Nigeria in Focus By Jonathan Kwitny Lagos It is a commentary on the pitch of emotions, the threat of violence, and the virulence of the rivalries now rending Nigeria that the Federal Military Council meeting held earlier this month was hailed in Lagos as a "very great success...

...As soon as Awolowo and Enahoro left prison, everyone began proclaiming them leaders of their peoples...

...A second constitutional conference, convened in late October, faltered when the massacres of Ibos in the North resulted in the Eastern delegation's refusal to attend...

...Martyr complexes were palpable...

...He is widely regarded as merely a stopgap against official anarchy...

...The East, previously the most nationally minded region, urged a loose confederation of states free to develop in their own way at their own speed...

...But over the next six months the new government proved itself unable to perform miracles in the face of a series of domestic crises, and the vigor of its program and the popular enthusiasm behind it waned...

...Where outside help is needed, say in the civil service, the North would much rather have British expatriates than equally qualified Ibos...

...sion "at a place to be decided later...

...People who trusted no other region were confident the East could and should make it on its own...

...But Gowon, who was picked for his job over his superior officer because of his Northern origin, and whose platitudes about peace and unity were belied by the continuing rampages of his fellow Northerners, did not seem capable of the leadership the people sought...

...Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Westerner of the dominant Yoruba tribe, and Chief Anthony Enahoro, a Mid-westerner of the Ishan branch of the dominant Bini tribe, had received 10-year prison terms in 1962 for an alleged plot to overthrow the Northern-controled civilian government by force...

...A customer who plunks down his shilling for rice and stew at a hotel still gets a few pieces of "cow-meat" on the plate...

...the Yorubas suspect the United Stales of aiding Ojukwu...

...Other modern conveniences, not to mention clothing or such items as canned food, also are much less in evidence...

...The fifth participant...

...The government is trying to open it up, and if the refugees are willing to farm, there should be an adequate food supply...

...The three regions contended that the problems of the Republic were not intrinsic but stemmed from the personal corruption of the politicians who ran it...

...The Ibo plotters' failure to give a broader base to their coup at the very beginning by acquiring Yoruba and Hausa help, which they could have had, and Ironsi's unification of the civil service in July, further sharpened tribal jealousies...

...They preached clan and tribal loyalty to eliminate opposition to their elections...

...Prices have gone up and the jostling crowds that normally pack the markets have thinned...

...In the Midwest, the so-called Western Ibos, who occupy the land between the Agbor and Niger rivers, engineered control of the region for one of their members, Dennis Osadabey...

...But Gowon????whom Ojukwu chides regularly in statements, and whose title of Supreme Commander Ojukwu conspicuously refrains from using?entered his job in July with little influence and has dissipated most of that...

...If that gets too expensive, the Ibos think they have enough pigs, chicken and fish...

...Yet such is the strength of the anti-Ibo feeling that if a final showdown comes between the North and the East, the sentiments of the West and the Midwest will tend to lie with the North...

...Awolowo's nickname of "Awo" became a byword for Yoruba power during the fraudulent 1965 Western Region election that saw the Northern-backed Nigerian National Democratic party almost openly stuff the ballot boxes to keep power from Awolowo's heirs in the Action Group...

...The trouble is that the North gives little appearance of closing the gap...

...or that the North will meet any indication of an Eastern breakaway with a military invasion...

...This was the atmosphere in both regions when the Ibo shops began to close and the lorries began to roll eastward...

...because both Great Britain and the U.S...

...One is bitterness between the refugees and the people at home...

...The Koranic schools can be held in the streets because, unlike a growing number of persons in the other regions, few Hausas own cars...

...This decision insured the "success" of the meeting...

...During the First Republic, political leaders strove for and maintained a balance between tribalism and continuation of the federation...

...Security has been tightened against them to the point of making whites, even Peace Corps volunteers, carry their passports...

...Untold thousands of Ibos were tortured and murdered...

...Yet once in Lagos or a regional capital they needed national unity to open the door to the really big money????such as bribes from foreign investors which were collected by the Federal government...

...During the annual constitutional crises, caused by tribal pressures, the politicians' self interests could be counted on to bring about a compromise that would keep the country together...

...No immediate physical threat faced the great majority of those who packed their bags and went home...

...Workers in a Kano hospital tell of clean-up details????shoveling the mutilated bodies of Ibos off Northern roadsides...

...The one food item that everyone expected to cut down on, beef (which comes from the Northern grazing lands) is not yet in shortage...

...Nigeria was committed to the adoption of modern political institutions and industrial methods...

...He felt he no longer could restrain the refugees from the North, who then numbered more than 90.000, from seeking revenge...

...One major bank has already closed its Northern branches...

...He denies widespread rumors that the East was importing arms...

...The sight called to mind John Steinbeck's description of the Okie exodus of the 1930s, except that the Ibos were streaming to their family homeland, not fleeing from it...

...One restraint on any thoughts of military revenge the East may harbor against the North is that most of the firepower of the Nigerian Army is in the North...

...The Italian company constructing the dam had employed hundreds of Ibo engineers, technicians and laborers, many of whom lived near the dam site with their families...

...Hardly a day went by through the summer and fall without some new story of terror...

...It consists of four regional military governors and Supreme Commander Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Hausa tribesman from the populous Northern region, who is Chief of the Council...

...The British also keep to themselves, while the Ibos work their way into the community...

...When an Ibo man comes, he buys his store, and he buys the land his house is on, and he stays here and calls Benin his home...

...Both the Western and Midwestern governments begged the Ibos to stay, and Colonel Ojukwu did not suggest that they evacuate...